1. Field
The disclosed and claimed concept relates generally to nuclear equipment and, more particularly, to a method of detecting and visually outputting information regarding nuclear dosage rates and/or other relevant information pertaining to the rate of nuclear radiation exposure during an operation within a nuclear environment.
2. Related Art
As is generally understood in the relevant art, operations such as maintenance operations, repair operations, and the like are necessary or desirable to be performed in a Radiologically Controlled Area (RCA). As is likewise understood in the relevant art, RCAs exist in nuclear power plant facilities, such as within the nuclear containment of such facilities, and in other places. Many such maintenance and other such operations within an RCA must be carried out by human personnel such as plant workers and the like. In such a situation, the worker who is situated inside the RCA is subjected to nuclear radiation, which is generally undesirable, so the worker typically is limited to at most only a certain predetermined amount of nuclear radiation, which is often measured in millirems.
In order to ascertain the number of millirems to which a worker is exposed during an operation within an RCA, it has been known to dispatch a number of personnel to the RCA for the purpose of measuring the various radiation dose rates at the various locations within an RCA where a worker may be expected to go. Such position-based dose rates, i.e., in millirems per hour, are then employed by planning personnel at the facility to plan the maintenance and other operations that are intended to occur within the RCA. The planning personnel consider the various dose rates at the various locations in the RCA and the amount of time that is anticipated for the worker to spend at various locations within the RCA. An estimated dose is estimated based upon the various dose rates that the worker will likely experience over the course of the operation. Various safety factors are built into the calculation in order to ensure that the radiation to which the worker is exposed does not exceed the maximum allowable dose.
While systems of this type have been generally effective for their intended purposes, they have not been without limitation. For instance, the safety factors that are built into the plans for performing the various operations are typically in the form of additional time, whereby the worker typically is removed from the RCA after a limited amount of time in order to ensure that the worker has not been subjected to more than the allowable dose of radiation. This is regardless of whether the maximum allowable dose has actually been received by the worker, and it increases the cost of performing maintenance and other activities in the RCA. Additionally, such planned operations are based only upon the data that was collected prior to the maintenance operation actually being performed, and it is therefore possible that the worker can be overexposed to radiation in excess of the maximum allowable dose despite the safety factors and precautions that are built into the operation. Overexposure of a worker to radiation is extremely costly and it is desirably avoided. Improvements thus would be desirable.